After three seasons of Nicholas Brody's moral ambiguities and zig-zagging loyalties forming the dramatic backbone to Homeland, the character came to the end of the line in Sunday's season finale. With Carrie looking on in horror, Brody was publicly executed in front of a jeering mob in Tehran, abandoned by the CIA despite successfully completing their mission.

To say that Brody has become divisive among viewers would be a gross understatement. For every person loudly declaring that Brody should have blown himself up at the end of season one as per the writers' original plan, there was another lamenting his absence throughout much of this season.

But the strength of Damian Lewis's Emmy-winning performance has been more or less universally acknowledged, even by those who grew tired of the narrative somersaults required to keep Brody in play as a character. The prospect of a fourth season – and in all likelihood a fifth, sixth and seventh given the juggernaut Homeland has become for Showtime – without one of the show's two key players is a tricky one.

So, how can Homeland survive without Brody? You can certainly argue that this has always been the story of CIA case officer Carrie Mathison, with Brody simply being an asset who became incredibly important. But we've spent too much time alone with Brody and Brody's world for that to feel right. We've been inside his head, we've seen him struggle, we've spent a huge amount of time with his family, and realistically he has been equal lead with Carrie far more than he's been a supporting player. He's built into the show's DNA, and as the third season has demonstrated, it's a very different show without him.

But here's the thing: We're not convinced Brody is dead. In fact, the more we've thought about the way that execution scene played out, the more convinced we are that this is an elaborate would-be magic trick. A third of the way into season three came the revelation that Carrie and Saul were in cahoots, and what we'd seen on screen had been only half the real story. It's very, very easy to imagine a similar rug-pull coming midway through the fourth season, where it's revealed that Brody survived the execution.

There is real-life precedent for this – a man survived his own hanging in Iran two months ago, having been left suspended for 12 minutes. The most humane method of hanging is the long drop, where the person is dropped from a sufficient height to break their neck. But Brody's execution was designed to make him suffer and to make an example of him, so he was suspended by crane and left to suffocate slowly. Horrific, but also a method that leaves more narrative doors open.

We see Brody's face and neck swelling, and his body convulsing, but there's no clear moment of death, and he's only been hanging for a minute or two when Carrie turns and walks away. It takes anything from five to twenty minutes for a person to die when they're hanged in this way.

It would have been very easy to show Brody being cut down, a doctor pronouncing him dead, his body being taken away, but we didn't see any of that. Instead, we got that jarring 'Four Months Later' cut, with no details at all of how Brody's death had been reported in the press, or how his family reacted to the news. All this adds up to a strangely anticlimactic and ambiguous ending for such an important character. Unless it's all a ruse.

And if it is, Javadi has to be behind it. He was so in control throughout the finale, handling Carrie like a pro with his speech about peace and Brody's legacy. He has every reason to try and secure himself some extra ammunition, given how precarious his position currently is – he's potentially an enemy of his own state, having embezzled money from the Revolutionary Guard to fund terrorism. He was very reluctant to return to Iran and only did so because Saul forced him, obviously fearing retribution.

So what if Javadi masterminded a way to gain public support by seemingly executing Brody, but secretly keeping him alive as a weapon to use against the US? Now that Brody has been abandoned by his own country, again, Javadi has every reason to believe he's vulnerable and could be turned against them with the right coercion. Let's not forget Javadi initially tried to enlist Carrie as a double agent by using the CIA's apparent betrayal of her as an incentive.

Yes, a fake-death plotline is outlandish. And no, it's almost certainly not going to be executed with as much skill as, let's say, Sherlock's. But the Homeland writers have put all the pieces in place for this to be the eventual payoff in season four.

There are also still question marks about Saul. We still don't know who the CIA mole is (assuming they weren't killed in the Langley bombing), and Saul has been many viewers' main suspect ever since that lie detector test in season one. He and Javadi have a long history together, and they've shared the screen relatively rarely this season. Could they have been in cahoots all along?

The fact that we've seen Saul and Javadi talking unobserved should in theory mean that this theory falls apart, but there were plenty of moments along those lines in Carrie's early storyline this season that didn't really make sense after the big episode four reveal. In other words, the writers aren't going to let that stop them.

Whether Brody is really dead or not, next season looks set to pick up with Carrie working as station chief in Istanbul, possibly with Quinn as her second-in-command. Showrunner Alex Gansa has promised a "major reinvention" for next year, with the focus being on Carrie working cases and handling new assets. That format might work brilliantly. It might not. But wouldn't it make sense for the writers to keep a dramatic ace up their sleeves – smash cut to Brody, alive – to pull out mid-season in ether case?

Before we ever met Javadi, he was referred to as 'The Magician'. And yet so far, we haven't really seen him do a whole lot of magic. Brody's death is his greatest trick yet.

Are we nuts? Or do you agree? Share your thoughts on what's to come in season four below!